ChatGPT makes the first move with subscription model in an ensuing AI race

OpenAI, the research facility that created the viral hit chatbot ChatGPT, will charge $20 per month for a premium membership to the service.

According to a blog post published by OpenAI this Wednesday, ChatGPT Plus would provide paying users early access to new features as well as access to the chatbot even during periods of high demand.

The chatbot, which was made available for public preview in November, has frequently experienced bandwidth shortages as a result of people flooding the website at once. OpenAI, which finalised a $10 billion investment agreement with Microsoft last month, is also looking for workable business models to offset the high operating expenses of its products and turn a profit.

ChatGPT has become one of the quickest consumer product launches in history by attracting a million users in only five days after its November reveal. However, ChatGPT is not the only game in town as the competition among AI laboratories has intensified lately. 

A study demonstrating a comparable approach that can produce music from a written description of a song was released by Google on 26 January. Investors at its parent firm, Alphabet, are waiting for its response to ChatGPT. In addition, Chinese search engine giant Baidu allegedly intends to include a chatbot in its search engine in March.

It is still too early to determine how much of the initial hype is rational. Regardless of how much ChatGPT and its competitor AI models alter business, culture, and society, they have already altered how the tech industry views innovation and its drivers.

The emergence of AI is upending Silicon Valley once again and the competition is not limited to large firms. Startups like Anthropic and Stability AI have created their own alternatives to ChatGPT. A well-known open-source model that transforms text into pictures was developed by Stability AI, a company that has brought together a coalition of small businesses, universities, and nonprofits to pool computer resources. 

On the other side of the world, for example in China, government-sponsored tech companies are preeminent for AI research. The Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI) is leading AI research in China.

The money flowing into AI startups, which collectively received $2.7 billion in 110 deals last year alone, suggests that venture investors are betting that not all the value will be captured by big tech. The Chinese Communist Party, Microsoft, Alphabet, and other global technology leaders will all make an effort to disprove these investors. The race against AI has barely begun.

Experts in Silicon Valley await fierce competition in AI. In this heated race, ChatGPT's introduction of a subscription model with better features marks a first. And this early-mover advantage could be self-reinforcing in many ways.

Insiders point out that OpenAI has been able to hire specialists from competing companies like DeepMind thanks to its recent quick advancement. Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta may need to regain their capacity for moving quickly in order to stay up – a tricky undertaking considering the regulatory scrutiny they are already facing from governments all over the world.